Chavez mentions tanks if ally loses Venezuela vote

CARACAS (Reuters) - Venezuela's increasingly bellicose President Hugo Chavez warned that he may put tanks on the streets if a former television star running for his Socialist Party loses a state election this month.

Chavez is expected to lose control of some key states and cities in the November 23 nationwide elections for governors and mayors.

In Carabobo, where a Chavez loyalist and former late-night talk show host risks losing the governorship, Chavez told party activists he might use the tanks to "defend the people."

"If you let the oligarchy return to government then maybe I'll end up sending the tanks of the armoured brigade out to defend the revolutionary government," he said late on Saturday.

In recent weeks the former tank officer also has threatened to jail the country's top opposition leader, Manuel Rosales, whom he accuses of corruption and of plotting to kill him.

Chavez frequently uses polarizing rhetoric as a campaign tactic to mobilise party activists to vote, but rarely carries through on his threats.

But at a rally in Carabobo in September, Chavez said he was expelling the U.S. ambassador. It was his toughest action yet against Washington, which he accuses of trying to topple him.

The president, who has spent billions of dollars on weapons from Russia in recent years, ordered tanks to the border with Colombia in March after Bogota attacked guerrillas in neighbouring Ecuador.

Popular for social spending, Chavez was first elected 10 years ago. He and his allies won every vote after that until last year, when they lost a referendum to change the country's constitution.

Since that defeat, Chavez has emphasized the importance of the upcoming elections. Widespread losses could weaken his position ahead of a new referendum he is expected to call in a bid to allow him to run again for president.

Chavez allies won 22 of Venezuela's 24 states in 2004 elections. Pollsters estimate they are set to lose between three and eight states.

Despite the fiery talk, Chavez quickly accepted defeat after he lost the referendum, which would have extended his powers over the oil-exporting nation.

(Reporting by Enrique Andres Pretel; Writing by Frank Jack Daniel; Editing by Xavier Briand)


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Seems rather undemocratic to me. Which is odd, because every time I mention that Chavez is perhaps less than a freedom loving, democracy supporting saint I get lambasted as a nationalist, pro-bush, rightwing nutjob.

Imagine for a moment if bush had proposed using the military to "protect the will of the people" if the elections happened to go against him.

Now he may or may not carry through on this, that's not the point. The rhetoric and the thinking behind it are certainly concerning, even in jest the leader of a democracy shouldn't mention using military force to suppress the results of an election.

Discuss.

The Chungeon

W supposedly already has the power to do just that in this nation in time of crisis. Why should our buddies to the south operate differently?

However, most likely Chavez is blowing smoke. It remains to be seen if the military would even obey an order like that, even if it were issued.

Me, I'm always willing to let other countries handle their own affairs. There is no obligation outside of PNAC for us to be world cop. Let's us just concentrate on keeping our hands off and our troops out. THat works for me.

we should get involved. I think we ought to stay ought of foreign politics as much as possible. And if we're going to start removing "evil" regimes then Chavezs would not top the list (I'm thinking North Korea).

And the constitution does allow the president quite a few emergency powers, but he is not allowed to use force to crush an election.

:popcorn:

thanks to the street.

:smoke:

That's the thing with Chavez. I tend not to trust anything about him at face value (pro or con, fwiw) unless the information is coming from and translated by a peer reviewed source. That leaves out pretty much all news organizations.

What ya got in those bottles down there? :)

The people's wine. :)

How can people defend that? Can you imagine if bush made threats like that during our election?

What a scumbag.

Right on man.. or something

:scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared:
:scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared::scared:

:boring:

clearly he can do no wrong in the present.

Iron-clad logic.

:shrug:

devilgrrls post.

Her meaning was pretty clear.

and my opinion may be slanted by other responses where people did take offense to the notion that Chavez had ever done anything wrong.

If she explains her response and it's different than how I took it then I will apologize for mis-characterizing her of course. A lot of nuances in the language are lost when typing, so these things happen.

I just refuse to believe that he's the tyrannical megalomaniac that he's portrayed as and I think that it has more to do with US Corporate Interests getting their hands on Venezuela's natural resources.

OIL?

so what's your opinion on this specific instance.

then come here and help Obama redistribute our wealth!!!!

Try to guess what Chavez really said.

fact is a lot of folks have tried to paint him as the devil for not accepting being kidnapped and threatened with death by the CIA. To bad the "news" service does not provide anything betond a contextless translated "quote" that cannot be verified. I am so very very sorry to hurt your feelings for not accepting without question what some random unknown to me person posts on a blog...

news outlets I may use when critiquing Mr. Chavez.

Or is any criticism of him by any news source proof that that source is unfairly biased against el presidente?

Lovely catch-22 there: you are free to criticize Chavez, but only from unbiased sources. What are unbiased sources? Why, the ones that refuse to attack and criticize poor Mr. Chavez.

Maybe they could interview his mother for some real, hard hitting journalism about his administration.

context? Or even that offers the untranslated quote alongside, or even the words that went before or after? As it is even the snippet cherry-picked by the "news" service to demonize him does not actually say what you say it does...and wasn't it Reuters who doctored photo's in the middle-east? not all that good a record.

meaning that any source I offer is still unacceptable merely by saying there isn't "enough" context.

And I don't speak spanish so I don't often frequent spanish newssites. Do you? Perhaps you could loan us your wisdom for the day.

And it says exactly what I said it did. I'm not sure where you're going with this.

Pure unmitigated horseshit. The original article is a study in how to make claims and smear without substantiating ANY of it. There are "quotes" that aren't quotes, there are conclusions drawn without reason, it's CRAP. It's a perfect example of a hit piece, written by moderately intelligent but extremely biased people to influence the moderately ignorant and uninformed.

Look JonQ, what qualifies as a decent source is not about what conclusions they draw but rather the logic used to reach them. Saying that a person said something without providing a quote, the original language, or any context whatsoever is a prime example of poor reporting and it is usually done intentionally to hornswaggle readers. Perhaps such boilerplate bullshit is what qualifies for journalism in your house but some of us have higher standards.

which were accurate (even one of your fellow skeptics gave an almost identical translation below) are misleading because the author interpreted them as they were stated. Fascinating. I've said this before but it bears repeating: imagine for a second bush had said these things. Would you even consider coming on here and defending him by claiming he was misinterpreted, or this is simply a smear campaign? Of course not. Let's be objective here.

Frankly I never understood the hero worship some people are prone to. Not in general, and certainly not towards Chavez. If you're going to idolize someone you could do better.

I mean really, he was going to reject the Constitutional vote and declare himself dictator.

He was going to become a Russian client state and/or form an alliance with Iran.

He was going nationalize the entire nation's media.

He was going to ally with invade Columbia.

blah, blah, blah...

Be afraid, be very afraid.:scared:

Yet another obvious corporate fascist hit piece paraded around like a piece of fresh meat. come n git u sum everyone!! yeee hawwww get the commie chavez!!

I love to wander through these threads waiting for the Kommie-Killers' assault.

They like to *think* they know how to lay an ambush....

:patriot:

Always interesting to see who shows up. :)

which ones are sockies.

There may only be one ostracised RW teenager behind *all* those nicks!



In my alert, I suggested a "Chavez/Castro" forum to keep them away from polite company.

You are on to something!

Chavez likes the sound of his own voice...just sayin!

He's accusing the opposition of planning another coup to oust him, using the prospective win in that province as a springboard.

Then he goes on to say that, IF SUCH COUP ATTEMPT HAPPENS, he's going to respond with force.

He's NOT saying he'll react to an opposition win with tanks on the street.

Capisce?

For being too trigger-happy at throwing accusations of coup conspiracies. Which is debatable, but at least is not idiotic.

But noooooo, they HAVE to lie. It's in their system, like heroine addiction.

he didn't say anything about a coup. He said "if they return to government". Like say, by a democratic election. Like, I dunno, the same way the democrats have returned to government here. At no point did he mention putting down armed insurrection.

You must be dizzy after trying to spin that so much.

Please, have a seat until you are feeling better.

On edit:

But I do think it's scary that you, like chavez, view a democratic election that goes against your wishes as no different than armed rebellion.

http://www.el-nacional.com/www/site/p_contenido.php?q=nodo/53447/Politica/Ch%C3%A1vez%20podr%C3%ADa%20sacar%20los%20tanques%20si%20la%20oposici%C3%B3n%20gana%20en%20Carabobo

"Ellos están haciendo todo lo posible para ganar la gobernación de Carabobo, el plan es ganar Carabobo, Miranda, Aragua, la alcaldía de Petare y Caracas, para luego el año que viene tumbar a Chávez, les repito que el Chávez del 2002 quedó atrás(..)"

Yeah, he didn't say anything about a coup. :eyes:

"For the ones lacking reading comprehension" indeed.

english?

And in following with the spirit of this thread, any translation you give, if I don't like it, will be assumed to be pro-chavez lies.

Fun game isn't it?

"They're doing everything possible to win the Carabobo administration, the plan is winning Carabobo, Miranda, Aragua, the Petare and Caracas city governments, in order to, next year, topple Chávez; I say to them again, the Chávez of 2002 is a thing of the past(...)"

It's nice that Spanish is such a widely-spoken language. There'll be lots of people willing to verify.

So the opposition is actually trying to win elections! This is unheard of.

I still fail to see where it says "coup".

Because toppling a government, winning cities/districts, these are all associated with democratic elections are they not?

If he'd said violently overthrow . . .

But gee, I didn't say "chair."

You're clutching at exceedingly tiny straws now.

at what point does he refer to a coup, rather than an unpleasant (for him) election result. We seem to be going around in circles here. I'm going off what he actually said (the quote you found was virtually identical, so I guess that does away with the whole "making up quotes" controversy). And you seem to be trying to divine what he meant, rather than what he said.

Imagine if all things were kept the same, but bush had said them regarding the '08 election. Would you be on here defending him? I wouldn't. I somehow I suspect not many others would either.

Or, you could just accept the approved pravda, as you did from the original article you posted. Christ dude, learn to think for yourself.

Didn't do much good to get through that thick RW skull.

but if I'd translated it myself wouldn't you be on here attacking me for doing it wrong? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. It's preferable to give the opposition the opportunity to do it, to avoid conflicts later on.

They only sprung into action with a bunch of bullshit stories about how Chavez was a dictator when he was ousted for a day by that CIA-backed coup. Turned out it was the CIA-backed thugs who wanted to be dictators, while it was Chavez that was the rightful democratically elected leader of Venezuela.

Is it any surprise he has to threaten use of force every time those same oligarchical thugs try to pull some new stunt?

headquarters in London. Not an American source.

they're hq in London. Thanks for clearing it allllll up

source, it isn't. I was correcting you. I doubt you will believe any source that says anything negative about Chavez, but you should at least rail against the correct nationality when denying it.

can anyone actually challenge the veracity of this article? So far quite a few people have claimed fascist propaganda. But even the direct quote that another user found translates to nearly the same thing. So chavez clearly said this, and you really can't misinterpret his meaning.

It seems in some people there is a switch for whenever a darker side of chavez is mentioned that shuts off all higher reasoning and leads to simply repeat the tired old "brawk rightwing propaganda" routine.

Could all you naysayers please actually read the article first, then respond.

You are restricted to using 4 paragraphs as fair use with regard to copywrite articles and you're supposed to provide a link.

Apart from that its probably a load of old shit.

who stop to comment on the subject momentarily.

You see it only occassionally, fortunately, with people who act as if the posters have invaded a private home instead of a thread in a public forum, and must be mocked, rebuked, savaged into submission. No doubt you know a couple or three by name who breathe down your neck all the time you're posting on their threads. Peculiar, to say the least.

http://i67.photobucket.com.nyud.net:8090/albums/h287/efrona/valken/aerostoot/stootvlucht7.jpg

Dive bombing!

http://i.dailymail.co.uk.nyud.net:8090/i/pix/2008/07/17/article-1035627-01F862F900000578-746_468x374_popup.jpg

directly to people who came on here only to call me a liar (not a label I care for actually), not those who came here to openly discuss the issue (which were very few).

for being so consistently wrong?

lol

NOW where will I turn for the God's truth on world events?

It's more than I can take, being stripped of my delusions, sfexpat2000. I'm sure you remember that dreadful, sorrowful awakening, yourself, when it happened to you! ~sigh~

besides of course, disagreeing with your preconceived notions of the world?

This is what I was talking about earlier, otherwise sensible people seem to have this switch in their brain that just shuts down all higher functions when chavez is mentioned in a bad light, and they go immediately in to denial.

Seems to be predicated on this fact: Chavez can do no wrong. Clearly then, any criticize of him is a lie. Why? Because Chavez can do no wrong of course!

A prediction that you seem to take as fact. lol

And your formulation is simply inaccurrate. The correct one is: Chavez doesn't fullfill the dire predictions of doom foretold in the corporate @ssed media, no matter how many times it's posted here.

So, before you have the nerve to tell me my brain is shut down, look at your own loss-win record, 'Kay?

:hi:

Paying particular attention to this bit: "Now he may or may not carry through on this, that's not the point. The rhetoric and the thinking behind it are certainly concerning, even in jest the leader of a democracy shouldn't mention using military force to suppress the results of an election."

Besides which, pointing out vague past wrongs, not attributed to anyone in particular, and using that to discredit all media when you don't like what they have to say is silly.

Besides which, I've yet to see any indication that this is inaccurate. One poster, who likewise opposed any negative stories about Chavez, put up the original spanish version which translated to be virtually identical to what Reuters had. He had to edit it by adding his own spin of course, but the words presented were no different.